If a stone falls at a rate of 9.8 meters per second from a height equal to that of the Tower of London, when will it reach the bottom? Goolgle gave a good translations of “rate” as velocidad while others gave tasa or precio. Many translated “a stone falls” as una caída de piedra.
I’ve had it up to here with these online translators. All of the translators gave essentially the same literal translation of the idiomatic expression “to have it up to here” (estar hasta las narices) - Lo he tenido hasta aquí con estos traductores en línea.
Did you hear what happened to Mr. Liebovitz? He broke the Rabbi’s wrist running away from a robbery This sentence is difficult because it is slightly ambiguous because it is unclear whether the Rabbi or Mr. Liebovitz were running away. Some translators opted for huyendo and others less acuratley said que se escapó.
I have endeavoured to make Virgil speak such English as he would himself have spoken, if he had been born in England, and in this present age. This phrase is admittedly very difficult to translate and proved to be too challenging for the online translators. None of them were able to translate hablar properly in the subjunctive and maintain the overall meaning of the sentence. The vocabulary is very straightforward here but the verbs tenses and subordinate clauses are beyond automatic translation.
The remote control is broken at Granny’s house. Google Translator has the best translation- El mando a distancia se ha roto en la casa de la abuelita- because it properly translated Granny and remote control while preserving the idiosyncrasies of the target language as regards the verb se ha roto. The other translators made minor mistakes with the verbs ser/estar and opted for the Latin American control remoto.
The president stepped down after accusations of misconduct hit the press. While “stepped down” was nearly always translated as se renunció or demitió, none of the translators appropriately translated “hit the press”.
Conclusion: Overall, we would recommend Google Translator as the best option because its translations were consistently better than the others. It was the only translator to properly change capitalization from English to Spanish. Also, it provides alternate translations for each term or phrase. While Bing Translator gave some adequate translations, all of the rest produced equally confusing and erroneous texts. Many translators are based on Latin American Spanish: for example, using control remoto instead of mando a distancia. Online translators do not differentiate between tú and usted and often neglect the proper use of the subjunctive. In conclusion, we recommend that online translators never be used by a serious student of translation as they cannot account for the context of each sentence or the meaning of idiomatic expressions.
We tried the below example sentences in each of the 10 following online automatic translators:
Google Translator- http://translate.google.com
BabelFish- http://www.babelfish.com/
FreeTranslation- http://www.freetranslation.com/
Bing Translator- http://www.microsofttranslator.com/
PROMT Translator- http://www.online-translator.com/Default.aspx/Text
World Lingo- http://www.worldlingo.com/es/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html
Dictionary.com Translator- http://translate.reference.com/
Reverso- http://www.reverso.net/text_translation.aspx?lang=EN
Babylon- http://translation.babylon.com/english/to-spanish/
WebTranslation- http://webtranslation.paralink.com/
If a stone falls at a rate of 9.8 meters per second from a height equal to that of the Tower of London, when will it reach the bottom?
Goolgle gave a good translations of “rate” as velocidad while others gave tasa or precio. Many translated “a stone falls” as una caída de piedra.
I’ve had it up to here with these online translators.
All of the translators gave essentially the same literal translation of the idiomatic expression “to have it up to here” (estar hasta las narices) - Lo he tenido hasta aquí con estos traductores en línea.
Did you hear what happened to Mr. Liebovitz? He broke the Rabbi’s wrist running away from a robbery
This sentence is difficult because it is slightly ambiguous because it is unclear whether the Rabbi or Mr. Liebovitz were running away. Some translators opted for huyendo and others less acuratley said que se escapó.
I have endeavoured to make Virgil speak such English as he would himself have spoken, if he had been born in England, and in this present age.
This phrase is admittedly very difficult to translate and proved to be too challenging for the online translators. None of them were able to translate hablar properly in the subjunctive and maintain the overall meaning of the sentence. The vocabulary is very straightforward here but the verbs tenses and subordinate clauses are beyond automatic translation.
The remote control is broken at Granny’s house.
Google Translator has the best translation- El mando a distancia se ha roto en la casa de la abuelita- because it properly translated Granny and remote control while preserving the idiosyncrasies of the target language as regards the verb se ha roto. The other translators made minor mistakes with the verbs ser/estar and opted for the Latin American control remoto.
The president stepped down after accusations of misconduct hit the press.
While “stepped down” was nearly always translated as se renunció or demitió, none of the translators appropriately translated “hit the press”.
Conclusion: Overall, we would recommend Google Translator as the best option because its translations were consistently better than the others. It was the only translator to properly change capitalization from English to Spanish. Also, it provides alternate translations for each term or phrase. While Bing Translator gave some adequate translations, all of the rest produced equally confusing and erroneous texts. Many translators are based on Latin American Spanish: for example, using control remoto instead of mando a distancia. Online translators do not differentiate between tú and usted and often neglect the proper use of the subjunctive. In conclusion, we recommend that online translators never be used by a serious student of translation as they cannot account for the context of each sentence or the meaning of idiomatic expressions.